


Letting Go

by Nell65



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Missing Scene, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-18
Updated: 2016-02-18
Packaged: 2018-05-21 11:24:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6049873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nell65/pseuds/Nell65
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Missing Scene, episode 3.04, "Watch the Thrones."</p><p>Lexa and Roan</p><p>I wondered about so many things, but especially why his face was bloody before their duel began. And why he turned his back on her in the first moments of the fight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Letting Go

“Prince Roan,” Lexa said, glaring down her nose at him. It should have been hard for her to do, given that he was more than a hand’s span taller than she was. But Titus’s men had forced him to his knees before her.

He’d been working out with his mother’s sword, a weapon he disliked for any number of reasons, but especially because it had been custom balanced just for her, and not for him. He was interrupted when a squad of Lexa’s guards had arrived under the direction of Titus, Lexa’s favorite tame priest.

“The Commander will see you,” Titus had said, his distaste for Roan a palpable, breathing thing. A nasty, slimy thing Roan would have very much liked to crush under his boot, but he let that impulse go. 

He was getting very good at letting go.

Now, Roan crossed his arms over his chest and nodded up at Lexa, but he couldn’t be bothered to work up a reply. She’d summoned him. Let her talk.

“You sent the Wanheda to kill your mother," she said finally, tiring of waiting for him to speak.

“Why would you think I did that?” he asked her.

“Clarke told me.”

Roan took that in. Interesting. Reconciliation between the Commander and her Wanheda was proceeding very, very quickly. 

“Is my mother dead?” he asked lightly, suspecting she wasn’t because if she were, everything would be happening quite differently right about now. But it was better to be sure.

Lexa’s expression was carefully blank. “No,” she replied. 

Roan wasn’t surprised by the wave of resignation he felt, though he was a little surprised by the faint thread of relief spiraling through it. It hadn’t been that bad of a plan, had it, that he should be glad that it failed? What, in his haste, had he missed?

“You should not have sent the Wanheda to kill your Queen,” Lexa declared, “She is not your errand girl.”

Lexa’s usual haughty demeanor remained unchanged, and yet Roan wondered if she was aware just how alive her jealousy was, almost making her skin glow from the heat of it.

“I didn’t send Clarke,” he said, curious to see if he could stoke it just a little more. “She approached me. Asked me for a way to stop the challenge. I offered her one.”

Lexa’s expression broke. She had to trade it in for a sneer. “Did you expect it to succeed?”

“No. I expected my mother to kill the Wanheda and so absorb her power.” 

Lexa’s flinch was so fast if he hadn’t been watching for it, he wouldn’t have seen it.

Oh, he would have regretted Clarke’s death, he was sure, if it had happened. But it would also have thoroughly disrupted the situation in Polis, and mostly to his advantage should Lexa wish to cut a new deal with Nia’s only direct heir. The Queen is dead. Long live the King. Or if not that, it might have at least created enough chaos for him to slip his bonds and leave the city. 

Which is why he hadn’t really expected Nia to do it, only mildly hoped she might, and in so doing give Lexa motive to kill her directly. Which of course was why his mother didn’t do it, unwilling to take the risk on herself when he stood to gain more than she did if Lexa had retaliated too soon. Forcing him to assume all the risks instead, when most of the benefits accrued to her.

“You didn’t think Clarke could do it?” Lexa sounded very much like she was defending Clarke against slanders he didn’t think he’d cast. 

“I thought it would be nice if she could. But either way was fine with me.” He shrugged, letting go of whatever faint hopes for Clarke’s success he’d allowed himself to have. “Didn’t really imagine both of them would leave alive,” he admitted.

Lexa raised her chin and looked oddly proud. “Ontari suspected the poison, or it would have worked.”

“Doubt it,” Roan said, taking some pleasure in pissing on Lexa’s pride in her latest pet. “Clarke may be the Wanheda, but she’s a terrible assassin.”

“What?”

“She couldn’t kill you either.”

Lexa’s brows snapped into a frown. “How do you know about that?”

“I sent her the knife she put to your neck.” And that she had failed pathetically to actually employ.

“You?!” Lexa looked genuinely shocked. Either by the news, or his owning of it. Or both.

It seemed that Clarke hadn’t yet told Lexa everything about Roan’s dealings with her after all, and he realized that there were some interesting limitations on Lexa's latest romance. And that the Commander’s newest fixation had retained all her claws. 

Then he wondered whom Lexa had suspected instead of himself. Realized half a heartbeat later that there were very few here that she would not suspect.

“Do you have any true friends left in Polis right now?” he asked her, not masking his astonishment at her isolation, or his pity.

Lexa glared down at him. “The great Prince Roan sinks to assassination. Are you so afraid to face me in combat?”

“No.”

“You believe you can kill me?”

“Yes. I know I can. If I want to.” He grinned at her, showing his teeth, and then made a half-hearted attempt to let go of his pride, “There’s always chance, of course. Any advantage can be seized. A loose stone, a stumble, a strike that falls badly. A momentary loss of focus. But the odds against your victory are long.” 

He’d already been offered a large purse if he threw the fight. When he had pointed out he’d be too dead to spend it, the oddsmaker had just shrugged indifferently.

Lexa raised her proud, confident chin. “You think it’s up to you to decide if I live or die?”

“Today I do. But," he cocked his head at her and considered a new plan. "I haven’t yet decided if I want to win.” 

“Why wouldn’t you want to win?” She looked genuinely baffled.

“And become my mother’s creature?”

She nodded slowly, a quick glimmer of scornful understanding flashing in her eyes. Then her face stilled again, some new idea forming. He held back his own smile. Lexa was, in her own way, utterly predictable.

“Would you rather be king, Prince Roan?” She had dropped her voice, trying for suggestive, he assumed. She only sounded foolish to his ears, as she tried to barter with his birthright.

He took a thoughtful pause. Then he let go of the emotions Lexa could read. Let go of hope. Let go of ambition. Let go of the will to survive. He accepted the reality of his own fate, on his own terms. 

Then he met her eyes, and smiled. “And become your creature instead? No. I serve my people first and last, and I will burden them with no debt of mine.”

“So you would choose death rather than serve any master? Take the coward's way out of your dilemma?”

“I don’t really care what you think of me. And I told you. I still haven’t decided what I'm going to do.”

“I think you overestimate your own skills and don’t respect mine nearly enough,” she snapped.

He did allow himself to grin as he looked up at her. “No. I don’t.”

Lexa scowled, not at all sure what to make of that, then she raised her chin and swept out of the small room.

Roan wasn’t really surprised when Titus slammed his staff into his gut as soon as she was gone. Or when Titus’s men started kicking him with their heavy boots once he’d doubled over and fallen onto the ground. Whatever Titus’s true feelings about Lexa, his lifespan would be counted in minutes if she died while Roan still held a blade in his hand. In the tiny pauses between the heavy blows, Roan actually developed a sliver of respect for the man. Titus was doing what he could, up to and including administering a thorough pre-duel beating, to try to even the odds.

Titus offered him a basin to wash, afterward. Roan declined. He walked out into the arena wearing no more paint than his own blood. Let them all make of it what they would. He was a free man now.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sure the show runners had some theory about the blood on his face, but they either cut footage that showed what happened, or didn't bother explaining it in the first place. So I filled in the gap myself.


End file.
